The Stream: 8.3.17

I just realized that streaming is a metaphor on the internet for a computer’s consciousness…maybe.

Well, probably, has to be, I mean…computer’s are thinking machines? But they also operate on some jank-ass logic by human standard. Then again, humans created logic, and computers, so perhaps that’s the point.

Humanity is fucking stupid, and I mean that with love. But, honestly, man, we’re fucking dumb as a bag of bricks, covered in 5 watt bulbs, being smashed into the side of a mountain. We are just functionally incapable — on the whole — of even being marginally smart.

And I’m not talking about human, singular. There are plenty of smart singulars; plenty of singularities of consciousness arrayed like a logical labyrinth out of a Borges Translation. Straight outta Borges, my new gangsta-philosophical tautological chain link of infinity.

Please don’t kill me for that one.

But, intelligence does not distribute evenly. Unlike the ideals of communism, human intellect stratifies pretty radically. But it also stratifies in so many crazy modalities, like some really intense free jazz, that we can’t really pinpoint what intelligence is.

I mean, if I asked you, you’d probably say “Intelligence is being really smart”; but that’s a tautology.

Maybe intelligence to you is “Knowing lots of things”. Well, to that I would say there are people who memorize shit for a living, and they’re of average intelligence.

For some of y’all, intelligence maybe just some…thing…like confidence. This effervescent constant that you just recognize in some people that makes them make sense…makes them logical, in an insane, illogical world.

For me, personally, the art of intellect is the art of metaphor.

Not for nothing, Analogical reasoning is a powerful, powerful skill. If you can write a metaphor – and recognize one – you have a leg up on the competition. The ability to recognize dissimilar things as similar has inherent advantages. Especially because we live in a fractal universe where everything operates on the same metrics, but at different scales.

Lemme back up a sec, because I don’t want you to think I’m intelligent, or that I know shit about shit. I have lots of pretty words, but Lao-Tzu – a homeboy I’m familiar with (I’m too white for this statement) – said “True Words are not Pretty, and Pretty Words are not true” so my pretty words are some steaming hot bullshit.

…ANYWAY.

I don’t know shit about math, which I’m working on, but I do know this thing that Benoit Mandelbrot pioneered, which is Fractal Geometry. If you are of the mind-altering substance persuasion, you’re familiar with what they look like. But in Geometry, they’re a shape that is the virtually the same at any size. A circle within a circle, which is, itself, in an even bigger circle.

Fractals are fucking EVERYWHERE, and dictate most of life. How you interpret the interaction of your body getting a cut, is practically applicable to how you staunch a more administrative wound. The beach always looks like the beach, no matter how far you pull out.

And, if you think metaphorically, you see this EVERYWHERE.

Two times in a row, i’m not sufficiently disruptive: peanut butter tribadism. Take that Bo .

But the ability to perceive like as like means you can apply situations independent of their context. So basically, when you gain a skill, it becomes equally applicable as a general skill in all areas of life.

For a good example: how many of you squat at the gym, or go to the gym? If you go to the gym and you squat, if you have high level analogical reasoning, you would be able to recognize that you can also squat to pick things up. By not restricting your squatting to just the gym, you not only maximize your effective body movement, you also increase the skill at the gym because hey, guess what, if you used a squat to pick up some heavy ass box, you also just did one squat, so that shit is in the piggy bank for your ass to be admired freely down the line by some pervy admirer. Go you, theoretical you.

So, if you have analogical reasoning, and you’re not domain dependent, every time you apply a skill — no matter what it is — with that mind-set, it creates a positive feedback loop so that every time you practice something, you make it more memorable, more widely applicable, and more useful.

That’s a mild oversimplification, but this isn’t a fucking research paper.

My point is: if you can analogically reason your way through life, you will be viewed as intelligent. You’re only building one skill at a time, but you’re using that skill for three things, so it’s like you’ve built it for three, so you’ve gotten extra practice.

What i’m saying is metaphorical thinking is the literal tits, and it’s how I quantify intelligence. Because I think being useful is a really important aspect of intelligence.

Sure, you could be totally fucking genius, have a massive amount of information stored in your orgiastic…organismic? orgasmic? you could have the entire literary canon memorized. You could be able to recite Balzac (hehe…balls)’s Comedie Humaine to someone from memory, or discuss particle physics like a champ; but if it’s not useful, then it’s just information. And inactionable information is fucking useless.

And people treat intelligence as something useful. So I use analogical reasoning as my primary metric. Because you’re far more likely to be useful with it.

Plus it makes you open minded, more willing to explore others, makes you empathic, and generally be awesome.

This didn’t mean to be turned into an ad for seeking out metaphor, but, well, here we are.

So what should you do to increase your analogical reasoning?

The quickest answer is look for the similarities in things first, and make a habit of it. Then, also, come up with 50 reasons for why Love is like Hair. That may sound stupid, but, true facts, there are 50 legitimate comparisons.